iOS 7 reviewed, drone attacks solved, and last year’s cases closed

It was a productive week for the writers and the readers of Ars Technica.

Andrew Cunningham brought us all the iOS 7 news you could want this week, from a gallery of comparison images in Death to textures: iOS 6 and iOS 7 compared in pictures, to an analysis of the new operating system on old hardware in New lease on life or death sentence? iOS 7 on the iPhone 4, to the actual review of iOS 7 itself, iOS 7, thoroughly reviewed. It was on this last article that many Ars readers left their first impressions of the new operating system. (And some just commented on the size of the article itself. Arcite took one look at the nearly 16,000-word review and wrote, "Now presenting, the gold standard of software reviews, the Ars iOS7 review. :::goes off to brew a large cup of coffee::: I'll need it!")

Marcos2247 was not a fan. "Just updated to iOS 7. I'm not lovin' it. On the iPad 2, there are definitely performance issues. Every now and then something in the UI stutters. And Temple Run 2 is a barely playable stutter-fest. I hope these things will be addressed in a future update. As for the UI itself: I have to say it looked better in pictures. In person, it lacks a certain polish. It does look like a bad Windows Phone ripoff. And that's coming from somebody who does not like Windows Phone."

Nice upgrade. Getting used to it is actually a bit uncomfortable for the first hour or two, but after that you get used to it and the advantages jump out. Everything is better designed and more powerful. The only real drawback I can see is that AidDrop seemingly doesn't work between iOS and MacOS.

As an example, I'm pretty sure that there are more categories and finer control in Privacy settings that now includes individual controls over access to: location services, contacts, calendars, reminders, photos, bluetooth sharing, and the microphone, Twitter, Facebook, and ad tracking. Tracking of cellular data transfer, per application, with the ability to evidently disallow an application from using cellular data. Passbook can be synced via iCloud, great new views and organization of photos.

Things are more consistent, like how you move up from a day view to a week view to a month view is the same as moving from an e-mail message to a mailbox, and the same as moving from Event views of photos to Moments to Collections to Years.

All of this works great on an iPhone 5.

But, of course, the battery life disappointed. Mannymal commented, "The battery life on iPhone 5 is disturbing; I hope it will be fixed. Battery life is one of the biggest reasons I switched from my Android device." And TerribleTony agreed: "Battery life on my iPhone 5 for the iOS 7 betas was bad. I didn't worry because beta. Battery life on my iPhone 5 for the iOS 7 GM was bad. I tried not to worry because I didn't do a clean install like everybody recommended. And now Ars is saying the exact same thing happened on their iPhone 5 even with a clean install? Profound sadness. 30 percent battery loss for an iOS update is not acceptable."

Deadly drones

As drones become more powerful and more prevalent in everyday life, it's not inconceivable that a terrorist might try to use an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to do some real damage in crowds. As Sean Gallagher explained in German chancellor’s drone “attack” shows the threat of weaponized UAVs, it's difficult to detect oncoming, malicious drones. If one is detected, it's difficult to disarm the drone without causing harm to the people below it.

"...And lasers? C'mon, guys. There is already a weapon out there that could take down a bird-like drone. It's cheaper than a laser, easy to use, proven, and requires no additional training for 30 percent of American males. In fact, many Americans own one already.

A shotgun, loaded with birdshot. $300 at your local Walmart and, honestly, pretty safe. Birdshot loses momentum very quickly—and that is what it's for: knocking down slow, delicate flying objects. Just a couple of Secret Service agents with shotguns would probably do."

"Airsoft shotguns for everyone!" agreed TedofChicago. Redo from Start had a similar idea: "Microwaves, lasers, these guys aren't thinking outside of the box...Water. A good-sized water cannon will drop anything that small out of [the] sky, probably short-circuit it and if you miss, you only get a wet audience. Annoyed but in one piece."

But Corporate Serf threw water on those ideas. "Drones could just carry a secondary small chemical weapon. All it will take is poison raining down on a crowd from a destroyed drone once to make law enforcement think twice about taking the next drone down. Remember, we Americans are the ones who pioneered this tech. Oops."

Zorro thought we could just keep the drones away from the crowds altogether. "Low-tech low-cost solution. Nylon Mist nets like Biologists use to capture bats and small birds. It is nothing but net made out of essentially clear fishing line. Just make tents with a net." And RobDickinson suggested we fight fire with fire: "The official answer is obvious. A swarm of laser toting defense quadcopters."

I'll note along with others that these things are bird-sized. So instead of spending millions or billions to develop and deploy automated systems of sensors, crowd-safe interceptor weapons, etc., how about spending hundreds each on an already existing defense system with extremely high-resolution visible-light sensors, a fully autonomous tracking and guidance system, and a non-explosive end-game attack subsystem that is completely crowd-friendly:

Trained falcon.

Put one or two security officers at the event with a falcon each, and give them the authority to loose their bird when they see fit. The bird's instinct is to find and attack small flying targets "down in the weeds", so capitalize on that in their training. Unless the drone is large, the bird could be trained to drag the drone away from the venue to the nearest parking lot, sparing the crowd from collateral damage.

I love a technological solution as much as the next guy, but sometimes there are better ways already in-hand.

Not quite to the bitter end

Lawyer Charles Carreon found his way into the limelight last year when he sued Matt Inman, the creator of the Web comic "The Oatmeal," and then began suing anonymous Internet commenters who were critical of his suit. As we summed up earlier this week: "things got even weirder when Carreon threatened Chris Recouvreur, also known as 'Satirical Charles,' who had created a website mocking Carreon. Recouvreur then sued Carreon in federal court for a declarative judgement that his site was not libelous." Now, Carreon is dropping his final appeal in the Recouvreur case and owes him $46,000 in fees.

"There is no legal remedy for butthurt," chimed in villageidiotintern. Carreon earned some disbelief from readers for claiming that his suit had become a waste of time. "SERIOUSLY? He's just discovered that having to defend yourself is an expensive and unprofitable time waster?" wrote scotts13. Others took real issue with the way Carreon continues to defend his actions: via a site where he claims he's been "rapeutated" and calls out a number of people, Ars journalists included, for slander. AHandMadeGrin wrote, "Echoing aldis' sentiment, carelessly using the word rape is not only unwarranted, it's unfair to actual rape victims." dfjdejulio agreed. "So wait... he's really drawing an equivalence between 'some people said some mean things about me on the Internet' and 'rape'? And he thinks that's going to help his case?" And Wardatrigger thought the same: "Ending it all with a rape joke, what a classy fellow this Charlie is."

But Daniel summed it up pretty nicely: "When you can create giant spreadsheets of people who have wronged you and how you are right and everyone else is wrong, sometimes, just sometimes, it means that you are the wrong one."

I really like iOS7, but for someone like my dad, who is sixty years old, it's not so great. One real problem is how light theme apple went with. His eyes can't see that well, I don't get why apple didn't make a option to change it to a darker theme. I also wished they had that option.

I really like iOS7, but for someone like my dad, who is sixty years old, it's not so great. One real problem is how light theme apple went with. His eyes can't see that well, I don't get why apple didn't make a option to change it to a darker theme. I also wished they had that option.

There are many options for increasing readability. See Settings > General > Accessibility.

The best way would obviously be to train Falcons to fly above the drones and then drop waterbaloons with glue or a similar sticky substance, this way you can take them out safely by having the falcons patrol in a big area around the "target" zone, which would allow the drones to be intercepted long before they are in effective range of civilians/targets.This would also protect the birds themself from rotors, explosions and other toxic chemicals.

I was having a terrible battery life on IOS7 for the first few days but the single biggest improvement came from tuning the Location Services.

It seems like the defaults are far too generous with turning on the GPS and it seems to be killing the battery. Disabling some of the superfluous ones brought my battery back to IOS6 levels. Seems like GPS and large downloads over LTE are the worst killers.